


someone else’s name

by museaway



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clones, Falling In Love, Future Fic, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Related, No shower sex for once - the author has shocked herself, POV First Person, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining, Post-Canon, Season 8 compliant, Unrequited Love, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 09:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19460887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: Still reeling from the emotional blow of Shiro’s marriage, Keith returns to the place where he discovered the clones, hoping to find closure. What he finds instead is a single surviving clone, Ryou, who is determined to be a part of Keith's life. But growing closer to him forces Keith to face his lingering feelings for Shiro, especially when things turn intimate and Ryou tries to reclaim his identity.Note: Though this is tagged both Keith/Shiro and Keith/Kuron, Keith is only involved with one person in this fic: the clone, who thinks of himself as Shiro. That's why I tagged both.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> This story is season 8 compliant. I wrote it to come to terms with the season and to give Keith a happy ending without writing about a divorce (which I’ve [already done](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17852474)). If you're hoping for something that makes S8 feel better, this probably isn't it. It's about identity and actively seeking happiness, not fixing things. 
> 
> **The primary relationship in the story is between Keith and a surviving clone.** That clone believes himself to be Shiro, so I tagged this Keith/Shiro and Keith/Kuron, but Keith is only with one person throughout. If you are expecting him to end up with the white-haired Shiro, it doesn't happen. That Shiro is happily married and his husband is on page. This story also depicts someone thinking about one person while sleeping with another. If that will upset or offend you, please don't read further. 
> 
> I tend to use sci-fi terms from Voltron, Star Trek, and Battlestar interchangeably, so you might run across a couple non-VLD words/tech. 
> 
> I didn't have the stomach to rewatch S8 to fact check this (though I did watch the end cards and burst out crying), so it's possible there's some stuff here that doesn't align, but please pretend it all makes sense. TY. 
> 
> Also, Allura is alive in this fic. The lions brought her back. *throws glitter*

I don’t know what made me go back to that place.

Nah, that’s a lie.

After seeing him at the last reunion—seeing _all_ of them—how happy they were, how happy Shiro was flashing pictures of his honeymoon (he used “we” a lot now), I suddenly wondered about all those copies who’d died in their pods before their first day of life. Years ago, now.

I fed the Blades a story about a rumor. People hungry for cloning tech. Acxa didn’t sound convinced but she didn’t tell me not to go. The bodies would be long gone, remains of the pods caught in orbit. Or maybe someone had come by and scrapped them. People scavenged for just about anything those days. But even without bodies, I could say a few words. Give them— _him_ —a proper send off. I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.

Guess there hadn’t really been time to think of it before.

The planet wasn’t hard to find. I’d never forget those coordinates. If that place hadn’t been so far from the center of the empire, we might’ve considered it for a new colony. Seeing that rock again, though, brought up things I try not to think about, like the stench of my own skin burning. His hands trying to kill me. I’d never told anyone, but I had nightmares about that place for a long time after.

Ruins of the facility had gathered into a jagged ring around the planet. I darted around a couple pieces of metal on approach to the rock. The ship was still there, the one Shiro had flown the time I’d followed him. I touched down beside it. It didn’t look like anyone had gone over the ship. Windows were still intact. A layer of dust had settled on the glass, but where it was thinnest, you could make out the instrument panels. The manual antenna was extended like someone had tried to make a call. After so many years sitting there exposed, it was no surprise parts of the ship had started to go haywire.

There wasn’t any sign of the bodies. They’d probably drifted or burned up in the atmosphere of the planet we orbited. Like last time, my sensors registered an atmosphere similar to Earth’s. Oxygen was high enough I didn’t need my helmet, but I wore it out of precaution when I left the ship.

I found the entrance to the cave easy enough. It was as good a place as any. I’ve never been much for tradition or ritual, but I closed my eyes and said a few words. It didn’t make me feel better. If anything, the stuff inside me felt heavier. I probably should’ve gone back to base right then, but there was no getting back in one night. It was already growing dark on the rock, so I figured the best thing I could do was return to my ship, report in that I hadn’t found anything. But I couldn’t make myself leave that cave. I’d followed him here once. Back then, I would’ve followed him anywhere.

It’s hard to say exactly when we fell out of step, but it probably started around the time we agreed that for the team’s sake, for the sake of us working together, we couldn’t have those kinds of feelings for each other. We couldn’t risk us putting each other first, not when we had whole galaxies relying on us. He was always good at being selfless like that. I’d thought that once we weren’t busy saving the universe, maybe it would finally be our turn, but that hope had died too with the clones the day we fell.

I cried in that cave where there was no one to see me. Coming here had been a mistake. The last thing I needed was more time in my own head; I got enough of that flying solo missions. But I’d have to stay the night. I was too exhausted to fly. It’d be warmest on the ship but I made a fire. It cast orange and yellow on the cave walls, like the desert at sunset—colors that would always make me think of him. It’d been years and everything still made me think of him. I had to stop that. He was married now. Happy, he said. Which meant I was happy for him. But you can be happy and heartbroken at the same time. I couldn’t smile at their wedding, though I’d told him congrats. There’d been a flicker on his face, like a computer glitch, and he’d hugged me the way he used to.

I’d cried that night too, in the dark with the dog licking my face. He stayed with my mom these days.

My scanners hadn’t picked up any large lifeforms, just some bacteria in the cave pools and these lizard-like things that trilled once the light was gone and scuttled along the rocks in the dark. Nothing dangerous, at least, so I didn’t bother setting up a perimeter. The fire went cold but it was warm enough to sleep without shelter. I’d slept out in the desert plenty as a kid, and that old shack hadn’t had luxuries like heat or air conditioning. Even the desert gets cold when the sun goes down.

I closed my eyes. Crying had made me feel loads better than trying to pray. All the bad stuff had faded and I felt peaceful. Didn’t feel like crying anymore, at least. Kinda pathetic crying alone in a cave at twenty-eight. I’ve watched ships blow-up, taking hundreds of lives with them, and never shed a tear. But then he always did mean more to me than anyone.

* * *

I still think it’s kind of strange that after spending so many years trying to bring down the empire, the Blade of Marmora’s purpose has become restoring it.

Even so, I got caught up in firefight occasionally—there were people who were loyal to the old ways and resisted the reunification—but nowadays, most of what I did was relief work and scouting for planets that could be used as colonies. Plenty of species had been displaced during Zarkon’s rule. The coalition was looking to get them settled. It was a long process, between terraforming when it was needed, building the basic infrastructure, transporting refugees and getting them settled. And that’s just the start. Colonies need decades of support before they’re self-sufficient, so a lot of us ended up flying supply routes and living on transport ships. That’s what I’d been doing for the last year.

I must have fallen asleep in that cave because I jolted awake when my suit alarm went off, and it took a few seconds to get my bearings. The scanner had detected something large within a five-hundred-foot perimeter. There hadn’t been time for the life on this rock to evolve. It’d only been a few years since the Galra maintained a base here. But if someone had been out this way scavenging, they might have left an animal behind like a junkyard dog to protect it. Or maybe the Galra had cloned more than just humans. We never got a chance to ask Haggar why she’d cloned Shiro and not the Holts, or why she’d created so many—were the clones delicate by nature or had she planned to have multiples of him walking around at once?

There wasn’t time to think about that now. The thing, whatever it was, was getting closer. It was between me and my ship, which meant I could stay put and hope I could fight it off, or go deeper into the cave where there might be better shelter. I took my chances where I was. The fire was dead. I couldn’t see worth shit, but I could hear the thing walking. Upright by the sound of it. My sensor screamed in my ears when it broke a hundred feet. I silenced the alarm and held my breath, wrapping a hand around my knife.

Something was casting light ahead of the thing coming my way—a torch of some kind. It threw the same colors as my fire. Scavengers? They were usually a rough crowd, but I didn’t have much on me worth stealing and most of them didn’t bother hijacking ships. Too risky. Depending on who you stole from, you might find yourself in custody or at the mercy of homemade justice. If I was lucky, they were decent folks trying to earn a living and would be happy to make an acquaintance with the Blade. If I wasn’t lucky…

I’ve always been good in a fight. I tightened my grip on the blade’s handle.

“I know you’re there,” I shouted, hoping they spoke Galra or had a translator. They were now standard issue in most suits, even the older ones you could pick up at a thrift shop back on Earth. As long as it was a species on the contact list, I had a chance of understanding them. I hoped it was Galran—a stranded soldier who’d be grateful for a rescue, or someone who’d crash-landed and couldn’t get a signal out.

It had never occurred to me that I’d meet him there, that I’d hear my own name shouted and see him running, that he’d hold the torch out with one arm and use the other to crush me against his chest, that he would murmur, “You found me, you found me.” That I’d cry for the second time that day.

* * *

He used his torch to relight the fire and sat down across from me to warm his hands. I couldn’t stop staring. There’s that saying about looking like you’ve seen a ghost. That’s the expression I must’ve been making, because there was Shiro sitting in front of me, no older than twenty-four, looking exactly the way he had when he’d left for the Kerberos mission: two human arms, not a scar in sight, full head of dark hair. I’d always dreamed of touching it. I was sitting by a fire staring into the face of the guy who used to take me riding in the desert, and I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe, but I had to hold it together.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked with the same concern he’d always shown me.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“I can’t believe my signal got through,” he said, ruffling his hair. “It took me a long time to get the ship’s system working, and it seems like there was damage to the antenna. I couldn’t get a fix on anything. To be honest, I didn’t think the signal had gone out.”

He had long hair, not quite as long as Shiro’s had been when he’d come back to us after he’d gone missing—well, when a version of Shiro had come back—but judging by the length and the state of his clothes, this one had been living on this rock for a couple years.

“How long have you been here?” I asked, and he looked at me funny, like I should know the answer to that.

“The days aren’t the same here, so I’m not really sure. How long have I been missing?”

“What do you remember?”

“I woke up in some kind of healing pod. I must have been injured, but I don’t remember it. It must have been during a match.”

“Match?”

He frowned and scratched his neck like he was embarrassed. “They’d send us to the arena. Fighting’s a sport for them. They…” He crawled closer to me and grabbed my shoulders, his eyes wide. “Matt. Is he…?”

“He’s fine,” I said quickly. “He’s on Earth, Sam too.”

“Thank god.” He sat back and rubbed his face.

“Are you the only one here?” I asked.

“As far as I know.” He held his hands out over the fire again. “I’ve explored pretty much every inch of this place. The labs look like they were abandoned a while ago. You’re the first person I’ve seen here. I saw your light reflecting and came looking for you.”

“Labs?”

“I’m only guessing that’s what they were, but there’s a lot of equipment left behind. I think it must have been some kind of hospital. Looks like they forgot about me when they packed up this place. I was in some sort of exam room when I woke up.”

The cold I felt had nothing to do with where I was sitting. I rubbed my arms and swallowed. “How have you survived all this time?”

“Whoever was stationed here left plenty of rations. I’ve got food and water for another couple years. That healing pod must’ve been really advanced. I haven’t had a problem with my muscles since I woke up. And there’s a generator that runs off of a pretty big crystal, but it’s cracked. Power’s been going out a lot lately. I try not to use the elevator—got stuck in it once for a couple days and thought I’d starve to death.” He laughed like I was supposed to find that funny. “I could hardly believe it when I saw you. I thought I was hallucinating. I bet you beat all my flight records by now, huh?”

“Uh…not exactly.”

He grinned. “Was it Iversen who sent you? I’ll have to thank him when we get back. How far away from Earth are we?”

“Pretty far.”

“I don’t have much to pack. Where I’ve been living isn’t too much of a walk from here. We can leave in the morning. Or do we need to get going now?”

He thought he was going with me. Of course he thought he was going with me. He thought this was a rescue mission, that I was someone he knew on Earth, that he was…

I couldn’t leave him here. I wouldn’t leave anyone behind—least of all him. But if I put him on that ship, if we left this place, he’d find out what he was. And if he found that out from anybody other than me, I wasn’t sure how he’d react to it. This person sitting in front of me thought he was my best friend, and I owed it to him to tell him the truth. But how do you tell someone they aren’t who they think? Or that they were, they _might’ve_ been, but someone else beat them to it?

“Morning’s fine, Shiro,” I said. It felt wrong, but he brightened when I said that name.

“It’s been so long since anybody called me that.”

I couldn’t tell him, _No one’s ever called you that. You’ve only existed for two years._

“Let’s sleep,” I said. We’d have plenty of time for talking tomorrow.

He took off the Galran cloak he had around his shoulders—he must have found it discarded on the base—and laid it on the ground. He patted the space next to him.

I stared down at the cloak, at his hand urging me to lie down. At this age, he’d still seen me as the kid he’d taken under his wing. Of course he was worried where I was sleeping at night, even though I knew I didn’t look the way he remembered. I’d recognized the confusion on his face. But time moves differently in various parts of space. He knew that too.

I lay down because it was what he wanted. He lay down beside me and that was what I wanted, what I’d always wanted. I felt guilty—but not guilty enough to get up and not guilty enough to tell him the truth, not just yet.

“Can’t believe you found me,” he said again and spread something over my shoulders. He was warm, and I was warm when I fell asleep.

* * *

Morning brought the light and his questions. We were lying on our sides. The fire had gone out but the cave wasn’t cold anymore. Shiro—I couldn’t think of him as anything other than Shiro right then—had his head propped up on one arm, studying me. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the scar on my face.

“What happened?” he said and I laughed a little sadly. Here of all places.

There was no point in lying to him.

“You and I fought,” I said and he looked understandably lost, his eyebrows pulling together. He extended a finger toward my cheek, brushing over the scar.

“When?”

“Six, seven years ago.”

“How…” He licked his lips. “How long have I been asleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have no memory of hurting you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes. “This isn’t a hospital.”

There was a pause before he said anything. And when he did speak what he said was, “I think I knew that.”

“When you went missing from Kerberos, you were…” I took a breath. “I don’t know the details. What we figure is that at some point after you were taken, the Galra made a copy of your genetic code. Somehow, they got ahold of your memories maybe a year later and used that information to make copies of you to infiltrate Voltron.”

“Voltron?” he said, frowning. “I’ve heard them mention that word. What is it?”

I paused. “You don’t know what Voltron is?”

“Should I?” he said.

“The infiltration was a success,” I went on, ignoring his question for now. “We didn’t know it wasn’t Shiro until it was too late.”

“Keith, are you trying to tell me that I’m…”

“You’re a clone.” The word echoed in the cave. “One of I don’t know how many. This place, this facility, is where they were storing them. I don’t know where they were made originally. I followed a clone here. I thought it was Shiro. He was under orders to kill me, to make sure I never left this place. He did everything he could to stop me. And I did everything I could to try and save him. You wanted to know how I got this scar, I got it trying to get him to come back to us.”

He was quiet for a moment. “If I’m a clone, then where’s the real me?”

My chest got tight. “He died the first year we were out in space. We thought he’d been teleported somewhere, but… His spirit was saved. It was able to be put back into that clone body.”

“He’s alive?”

“The other clone? Yeah, he lives on Earth. I saw him not too long ago, actually.”

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked and the question was so absurd, I almost laughed.

“Why would I kill you?”

“You said there were others. I assume they’ve been destroyed.”

“Not by me. Anyway, now you know everything I do.” I rubbed my face. “We should get your things.”

I went with him to the place where he’d been living. The bunker was made to hold about twelve Galra, probably the scientists who’d once worked at the facility.

“This one time,” he said, motioning to a bank of computers. I aimed my flashlight where he was pointing. “I had the power working. I saw pictures of myself. Well…what I assumed were pictures of me. I guess that makes a lot more sense now. What did they want with me?”

“I don’t know. The person responsible died before I could ask.”

He went to a low bunk in the corner. It was littered with blankets. The room was cold. There was a pile of rations, sterile containers of water. Pieces of mismatched clothing. Pillows bunched up against the walls, probably for insulation. My teeth chattered thinking of him living here alone. He took a long look over all of it and let his arms fall to his sides.

“Guess there really isn’t much here after all,” he said, smiling.

“Take what you want. There’s room on the ship.”

He brought one of the pillows and a couple pieces of clothing that looked cleanest. When we left the bunker, he didn’t look back.

The early morning mist had left a film over the hull of the ship. He slowed his pace as we approached it.

“This isn’t one of ours,” he said.

“No.” There was no way to mistake the ship as an Earth vessel. It was as dark as any other Galra craft, with Galra script on the hull and the door panel I put my hand to.

“Where did you get it?” he said.

“It was assigned to me. We can talk more inside.”

I showed him to the small cabin in the back of the ship. “This is the shower. Not much in terms of water pressure, but it’ll get you clean. I doubt any of my clothes will fit you, but you’re welcome to whatever you can find.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll have to strap in while we take off. Once we’re underway, you can move around the ship.”

He knew that. I didn’t know why I was saying any of it, but he nodded and trailed me to the cockpit.

“Like old times,” he said, grinning. And then the smile flickered and a haunted expression came over his face. I didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. He and I had never done this. He’d never been in a spaceship before.

As soon as we were free of the rock’s gravity, the rattling throughout the hull stopped and that welcome emptiness of space stretched out in front of us. He undid his restraints and got up.

“If it’s alright with you, I’ll wash up now.”

“Sure.”

Once he was gone, once I heard the door latch, I touched the keypad on the view screen. There was only one person in the universe who had an idea of what he was going through. Shiro might have advice about what I should do. It had been months since I’d called him, something I’d had to learn to stop doing. After all, it had been second nature for over a decade.

He wore glasses now and was letting his beard grow in. It looked terrible on him, but the sight of his face on the view screen made my chest ache.

“Keith? Is something wrong?”

The video lagged a few seconds because of the distance, but I could hear the concern in his voice. We didn’t call to check up on one another anymore. I would have killed for a drink just then.

“I’ve got a situation,” I said.

“Are you safe?”

“It’s not that kind of situation. One of the clones survived.”

His eyes widened. “What? How?”

“I don’t know. He said his pod was kept in some kind of lab, not up with the rest of them.”

“You went back there?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know who has jurisdiction over this. He’s human, so I think it makes sense to return him to Earth. I’d take him with me, but they’ll have me back out on another mission after this.”

Shiro was still on leave from the Garrison. He flew short-range commercial stuff and taught flight at Arizona State’s reopened campus, but he reported to base occasionally and had kept his clearance.

“I can arrange for someone to rendezvous with you,” Shiro said. “We can pick him up and bring him back here. How is he? What kind of state is he in?”

“Healthy from what I can tell. Looks like he’s been out for about two years. Was living alone in what was left of the facility. I haven’t talked with him long enough to know if he’s mentally sound, but he didn’t know what he was.”

“You told him?”

“He was going to find out anyway. I think he might be an earlier clone. He doesn’t seem to remember anything past the arena. Didn’t know what Voltron was.”

Shiro nodded. “Where is he now?”

“Shower.”

Someone talked to him off screen. A man. He called Shiro by his first name. I didn’t need to see him to know who it was. Shiro covered the microphone and leaned out of the frame. I turned my head away. When I looked back, he was facing forward again and his glasses were slightly crooked. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Can I speak to him?” Shiro said.

“Sure. I’ll call you back when he’s ready.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

I said nothing and ended the call. That ache in my chest didn’t let up. It never did.

The ship was set with my return coordinates. I left them and got up to check on him. He was already out of the shower. I caught him changing. If there’d been any mirrors on that rock, he might have realized that his memories couldn’t have belonged to him. That body had never seen an arena. It had never been in a fight. His back was an expanse of perfect skin. Not a scar. Nothing like Shiro’s back had been, or the back of the clone that returned to us—I can only imagine the torture they must’ve put it through. This one hadn’t had anything like that done to it yet.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

“It’s been a long time since I took a hot shower. Guess the base really spoiled me,” he said, and then the pinched expression was back. He was wondering if he had _ever_ taken a hot shower, if any of those memories of the Garrison were his. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud. In his mind, he was still Shiro, seven years my senior and duty bound to act like it.

“I made a call to Earth,” I said. “They can send someone to get you when you’re ready.”

He frowned. “You’re not taking me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t live on Earth anymore. I’m part of an organization called the Blade of Marmora. You met one of our members— _Shiro_ met one of our members.”

“The one who helped me escape.”

“Yeah. He died not too long before Shiro did.”

He frowned. “You work with the Galra?”

“Yup.”

Although he didn’t actually take a step backwards, I could feel him recoiling from me. “Why would you…”

I might as well be the one to tell him this too. “My mom’s Galran.”

He pursed his lips as the answer sunk in. This Shiro had only known the Galra as captors. It was natural he’d be wary of me now. “That...that must have been a shock when you found out.”

“You could say that. Anyway, now that the war is over…”

“It’s over?”

“It’s been over for a few years. What I do now is mostly humanitarian. Sometimes recon. That’s what I was doing here, checking to make sure none of this technology was being used for illegal purposes.”

That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know the real reason.

“So you didn’t get my signal?” he said.

“No. I had no idea you were down there.”

A softer look replaced the confusion. He put a hand on my shoulder, on a place that had gone cold.

“I’ll place that call to Earth now,” I said.

I left them alone to talk and used the time to clean up. The shower was wet from him using it. My towel was wet. The outline of his footprints were on the floor.

Earth would send a ship, and in a couple of hours the footprints would dry like he’d never been here.


	2. two

When Shiro had first told me he was seeing someone, I used to fantasize about moving back. 

I blamed our fallout on the distance. If I hadn’t been so far away, if I hadn’t been gone for so many years, if we could have just seen each other a little more, maybe things wouldn’t have ended up the way they had. 

I used to wonder if that shack had survived the war. There hadn’t been time to look last time I was on Earth. If it was still standing, I could’ve carved out a pretty comfortable living. I would’ve had a Garrison salary and spent my time recruiting a new generation of hotheads. Shiro and I could have spent our weekends out there riding or just being alone, lying on that old couch. We could’ve gone shopping for a new one.

I’d never had the guts to ask if he thought it could’ve been different. Either way, I would’ve hated the answer. 

I stayed in the back until I couldn’t hear their voices anymore and I was sure they’d ended the call. It wasn’t something I should’ve sat in on. There had to be topics they needed to discuss that I didn’t need to hear. Medical stuff. Personal. Shiro would probably try to confirm the clone’s memories, make sure they were genuine copies. That’d mean talking about things I wasn’t really entitled to hear anymore. And anyway, if the clone had needed me, he could’ve said something. 

I found him in the cockpit staring at the view screen, tracing a finger over the coordinates for Daibazaal, where my mom lived. I had plans to detour there for a couple days, see the dog. Catch up with her. Get wasted and forget all this. 

“Are they sending a ship?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I told him I didn’t want to go back.”

As far as I knew, there was no galactic law that said a human born off-world had to be returned to Earth. Technically, he was a citizen of whatever planet where he’d been made. If it was this place, it had no laws. As an uninhabited world, it was governed by Galra rule because it was within the empire. That meant he was a Galra citizen and could take up residency on any member planet willing to take him.

I told him where I was headed. I told him he was welcome to come with me, but that Earth was the best place for him.

“What would I have there?” he said.

I didn’t know how to answer that.

We flew most of the way in silence. He slept for a lot of it. The trip wasn’t long. Half a day, a couple hyper jumps, and we were orbiting the restored Daibazaal, a spherical blue-green world in the heart of the new empire. We had to wait for our request to descend to be approved. I woke him up before we entered the atmosphere, before the ship started to shake. 

I guided it down to base and landed beside a similar ship my mom used when she went off world. The ship seemed to exhale as I shut it down.

“You’re good at this,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and unfastening his seat restraints.

“I had a good teacher.”

I thought we’d never do this again: sit side-by-side in a cockpit, my hands on the controls, him beside me. Steady. Calm. But his scent was different. He didn’t smell quite like Shiro. I held my breath.

* * *

I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face when I brought him home. I hadn’t called to warn her. But she knew what was going on the second she looked at him, and the look she gave me was shocked. Still, she welcomed him. Got him food and put him at the table. Kosmo sat next to his feet waiting for him to drop scraps.

“I need to talk with Keith for a minute,” my mom said and dragged me outside onto the balcony. It looked fifteen floors down to the street. She shut the door and spoke quietly.

“What is going on?” she said. “Did you have that thing manufactured?”

“You really think I’m that pathetic?”

The look on her face told me she thought it was possible. “Then he’s one of Haggar’s?”

“I found him where I found the others.”

Mom narrowed her eyes. “Is _that_ why you went back there?”

I spit off the balcony.

“Watch your manners,” she said. “I live here.”

“He doesn’t want to go to Earth.”

She sighed and folded her arms on the railing next to mine. “Will you take him with you?” 

“I was hoping you could find some work for him here.”

“I can put a call in to the Galactic Coalition. They’ll know what planets are in need of volunteers.”

“Can he stay here until he finds something?”

“You’re going to leave him?” She sounded disapproving. 

“What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Does he know?” she said.

“I had to tell him, mom.”

“That’s not who I’m asking about.”

“Yes, I called Shiro,” I told her and cleared my throat. “They talked.”

“And this one.” She nodded toward the apartment. “What is he doing about an identity?”

It was common to run across people without belongings or identification, without a planet to return to. Any refugee camp or resettlement could make up the documents he would need, but the people that relied on those places weren’t human. It wouldn’t be right expecting one of them to take care of him when Earth still existed. There were plenty of people across the empire willing to fake IDs if you had enough credits. I didn’t have anything better to spend mine on.

“We haven’t gotten that far,” I said.

“I’m sure the Coalition can help with that too,” she said. 

I dipped my head. “Thanks.”

She didn’t waste time with small talk or by asking how I felt about finding him. While both of us were looking out across the city, she said, “He is not a replacement for what you lost.”

“That’s why he can’t come with me.”

The two of them talked like old friends over lunch. Mom told him the story of how she came to Earth. He told her how I stole his car. _Shiro’s_ car. The owner of that car was long dead. He was on Earth with his husband. He sat to my left. 

I must’ve made a face. I must’ve done something because he grimaced and said, “Sorry. I guess they’re not my memories, but they’re all I have.”

Mom put him up in the spare room. I took the couch. There was room for us both in the bed, but I didn’t think I could stand sleeping next to him again. Kosmo got up three times in the night and kept curling up on my legs so I couldn’t sleep. I listened to his claws on the kitchen floor, his weight as he paced the hallway outside the room where the wrong Shiro was sleeping. 

* * *

The next morning I looked like I’d done the trials again. I rubbed at the circles under my eyes and yawned until I got a caffeine tablet into my system. He got up late, apologetic when he joined us in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry for sleeping so long,” he said. “Can I help with breakfast?”

“It’s lunchtime and the food is already prepared,” mom said. “Help yourself.”

He made up a modest plate and sat next to me.

“Watch out for the dog,” I said. “He steals food.”

“I’m going to reach out to the Coalition today,” mom told him. “Is there a type of work you’d like to be doing?”

“Flying,” we both said. He smiled and I covered my mouth.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’d like to fly,” he told her, “but I think I’d be happy doing anything at this point.”

“You’ll need a different name,” she said. “It would be too difficult to explain otherwise.”

“Shiro and I talked about that,” he said, the first I’d heard of it. “He thinks it would be easiest to say we were brothers. That way, my last name is the same. As long as he’s not around, you could still call me Shiro.”

There was no way I could do that. I swallowed. “What name are you thinking?”

“When I was born, my parents couldn’t decide between Ryou or Takashi. They flipped a coin. It would still be a name my parents chose.”

I repeated the name, a necessary wall between us. With it in place I could look him in the eye. 

It wasn’t just his coloring that set him apart from Shiro. Now that I was seeing him in good light, I could pick out minor differences, things genetics couldn’t account for. The skin around his eyes was smooth—-he’d only opened them a few hundred times. His hair showed no signs of graying. There was a tiny scar on the left side of his neck, probably an injection site. 

Ryou. 

For the first time since he’d found me, I felt like I could look at him and breathe.

After lunch, mom left us alone and went to catch up on paperwork. Ryou—that would take getting used to—ate the seconds she insisted on.

“I thought you hated broccoli?” I said, watching him shove a spear of it in his mouth. They cultivated all kinds of stuff here—Terran, Galran, Altean. He stopped chewing for a second, then resumed and swallowed.

“I guess I like it now.” He took another bite. “What happened to my hair to make it go white? You’re not old enough for me to be in my fifties.”

There were probably a lot of things he wanted to know. I folded my hands on the table. “It happened after his spirit was restored. Allura—you haven’t met her, she and Lance live on Altea—she was able to transfer it from where it was stored into a clone body. We assumed the stress caused his hair to change. Other than that, he was fine. She saved his life.”

He tilted his head. “Does it upset you to talk about him?”

“Why should it?”

“Your face changes whenever he comes up.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my neck. “We’re not as close as we used to be.”

“Why not?” he said. 

“It’s hard to stay in touch with you’re across the universe from one another.”

He smiled a little and then his expression turned serious. “Keith, did Adam…”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. There was an attack on Earth. He’s been gone for a few years.”

He went still. I watched the emotions flash across his face: confusion, disbelief, grief. His eyes shone with tears but he didn’t cry. After maybe a minute, he brought a fist to his lips and cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on the table. 

“An attack?” he said. His voice was strained.

“It was the Galra. They destroyed a lot of the major cities and the Garrison lost most of their fighters trying to hold them off. There’s a memorial wall. You visited it— _Shiro_ visited it—when we went back.”

He wiped his eyes. “Why didn’t you stay on Earth with the rest of them?” 

“I found my place out here.”

He nodded slowly. “Do you think you’ll ever go back?”

The words he’d said to me rang in my ears. _What would I have there?_

“Probably not. Not with my mom out this way.”

“But you visit?”

“Sure. I was back for the wedding.”

“Wedding?” he repeated, finally looking up at me.

“Shiro’s married. Didn’t he mentioned that?” I tried to sound casual, which probably came out bitter. He shook his head.

“We mostly talked about me. He said I could call him anytime. He said you were a good guy, that I should lean on you—like I didn’t know that already. He’s married, huh?”

“A little over a year ago. His husband’s in communications. Shiro actually left the Garrison.”

His eyes widened. “And he’s happy like that?”

I shrugged. “He says he is. It’s not really my business.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“My lifestyle’s not great for relationships.”

“I meant, are you happy?”

I hadn’t been asked that in a while. Shiro was usually the one who asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “My work’s fulfilling. I like helping people.”

“You know, when we first met,” he said, “I was really worried about you. You never smiled. I used to wrack my brain thinking of ways to get a laugh out of you.”

“You know normal people don’t try to help out the kid who steals their car?”

“You weren’t a bad kid. You just needed somebody to believe in you.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess this time I’m the one who needs your support.”

“You don’t have to work for the Coalition,” I said. “If you change your mind in a couple days and you want to go to Earth…”

“I want to fly,” he said. “I don’t want to be grounded while I wait to go through the ranks. Even if I pass myself off as my brother, they won’t put me in a ship anytime soon. How old would you say I am now?”

“You look about the way you did at twenty-four.”

He repeated that number and shook his head. “Even if we could fake my records, I don’t know if I’d want to compete against myself. What rank is he?”

“Captain.”

He let out a disbelieving laugh. “I thought I’d be lucky to reach that by thirty-five. I can’t believe they gave it to him. And what about…” He gestured toward his body.

“His is healed the same as yours,” I said. “We think they must have genetically modified the clones. There’s no sign of the disease.”

“Wow,” he said. “So what’s his husband like?” 

I shrugged. “I don’t really know him.”

He looked at me funny, probably wondering why, since the two of us had been so close, I wouldn’t even have an idea about the guy Shiro was going to spend the rest of his life with. But he’d always been good at reading the atmosphere. He put a hand on my shoulder and gracefully changed the subject.

* * *

I got a message from Acxa that she was heading for a planet where most of the infrastructure had been destroyed by ion cannons. Few working roads, damaged water supplies. We were coordinating supply drops and scouting engineers. 

“How was your trip,” she asked in monotone. There was static on the line, engine noise in the background. I squinted like it’d help me hear her better.

“It went okay. Didn’t find any signs of looting.” 

She made a noise like she’d known that was a lie from the start. “I meant the reunion. Did you bring back any souvenirs?”

I looked into the house where Ryou was talking with my mother.

“I brought back a couple things.”

“How soon are you leaving?” she asked.

“I’m on Daibazaal with my mom. I’ll head out in the morning.”

“Message me when you’re on your way. I’ll see you when you get here.”

She was a good partner. Didn’t ask too many questions. I used the remaining time while I was on Daibazaal to wash my clothes and take the dog for a long walk.

“You coming with me this time, buddy?”

It was a bullshit question. Kosmo was getting older. It was better for him to have a stable place to live and he was good company for my mom, who was still adjusting to being grounded. 

Ryou saw me off. It was a strange reversal. He hugged me the way I’d hugged Shiro the morning of the Kerberos launch. 

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

“Yeah, you too.”

“I’ll let you know how I’m doing.”

I nodded at my boots. “I’ll call you the next time I’m out this way.”

“I’m going to be okay,” he said. 

“I know you will.”

My mouth slid into a smile I didn’t feel. It fell as soon as I turned away.

* * *

It took a couple weeks, but the Coalition found work for him transporting beings who’d been displaced by the war. 

The Olkari colony had been established on a lopsided planet terraformed to resemble the atmosphere and landscape they’d been accustomed to. The Olkari hadn’t been great explorers, but enough of them had been off-world at the time of their planet’s destruction or been able to evacuate that the colony was a couple thousand in number. Pidge had dedicated herself to it, spending weeks at a time helping them construct a city like the one that had stood on their forest planet. 

She liked Ryou immediately. Adopted him, I guess you could say. She was early twenties herself, fascinated that one of the clones had managed to survive and in all of the ways he differed from Shiro. 

“I’ll take care of him,” she promised and sent photographs of him working on the colony, interacting with the survivors, with one of the crowns on his head that helped the Olkari communicate with the planet that would now be their home. The way it was set on his hair, he looked like a prince from that fantasy game they’d all liked playing once upon a time. I wondered if he’d like it.

He messaged me a lot. They started out short, informational. Polite. Very Shiro-like. I made the time to write him back. I’ve never been good at friendship. Pidge could tell you. Any of the others. They say they’re lucky I make the once-a-year reunion. But I looked forward to his messages. 

He never signed them. And when I wrote, I didn’t use his name.


	3. three

Five months after I left him to start his new life, the Blade was scheduled to make a supply drop on the Olkari colony, so I took the opportunity to see him. 

After I’d made the drop and called my mom about a matter in the Denubian Galaxy, I went to the temporary housing where he’d been living. The accommodations were modest, a one-room apartment that fit a bed and sliver of a kitchenette, enough to boil water. He’d sent pictures when he first moved in, and across a couple of months, I’d watched the gradual accumulation of stuff he’d collected, mostly trinkets given to him by grateful passengers: rocks zigzagged with lines that glowed if he held them, tiny figures made from wood and metal.

I got a jolt in my stomach when they told me he wasn’t living there anymore. It blindsided me like the day I’d heard about the wedding.

I thanked the person who’d given me the information and walked a couple steps backwards out of the room, then turned and headed back to my ship. Had he left the Coalition and gone to Earth after all? They must’ve sent a transport to pick him up. I brought up his contact information as I walked. He hadn’t sent any new messages in a couple days. It wasn’t like the first month when he’d sent seven within the first two hours. But it made sense. Now that he was making his own place in the world, he wasn’t dependent on me like he’d been when I found him. 

Was that how Shiro had felt when I became the Black Paladin? 

I tried not to be pissed off, even thought I was pissed that he hadn’t told me he was leaving. Unless he thought he couldn’t, that I’d be disappointed. Try to convince him to stay. But he was the one who’d wanted to come here. He’d chosen it himself. I’d told him to go home. 

Maybe he was afraid I’d say, “I told you so.”

He picked up my call right away. He was lying in bed and grinning, hair tousled and tucked behind one ear. He didn’t have on a shirt. I could see his chest.

“Keith!” he said with so much joy I couldn’t be mad at him. I blushed like an idiot.

“How long ago did you pack up and leave this place?” I said. 

He frowned. “I don’t know what you’re…are you on the colony?”

“I did a supply drop this morning. I stopped by where you’ve been staying, but they said you don’t live there anymore.”

“I got a bigger place. Where are you?”

I stopped walking. “I was headed back to my ship to take a rest.”

“Come here.”

“Where is it?”

He gave me the location, a new apartment building designed for off-world workers. They’d built it not far from the docks, a good-looking building constructed out of black cubes. Glowing green lines cut across the exterior. He met me at the door to his apartment in a pair of shorts. I swallowed, aware of the dust and sweat on my suit, the four days since I’d showered. But he pushed the door open with a huge smile and pulled me into a hug.

“Keith.” I’d always loved how he said my name. He held me for longer than he should have, longer than Shiro would have. I worried something was wrong, but he was smiling when he pulled away and gestured for me to come inside. 

The apartment was bright. Comfortable and a little larger than his last place. He’d stuck his bed next to the window, beside it a small table and chairs. The kitchen counter bent at a 90-degree angle into the corner, so he could prepare an actual meal. There were two doors on the opposite wall, a closet and a bathroom if I had to guess. His black flight suit hung from the wall near the entry where we stood. The place smelled like him. 

“Are you hungry?” he said. “Do you want to grab a shower?”

“Would you mind?

“Of course not.” He’d already moved into the kitchen area and was looking through his food supplies. “I don’t have a lot, but I can run out.”

“I ate not too long ago. Is your bathroom this one?” I pointed to the second door.

He jogged around me and opened it, switching on the light. It had been designed with consideration for human proportions. They might’ve built it for him specifically. There was a shower with a basin large enough he could comfortably stand in it, a commode human height, and a sink. Similar to what we have on Earth, but alien enough I knew we weren’t.

“Towels are a little hard to come by,” he said. “I usually drip-dry. It’s arid here, so it doesn’t take long. But I have one if you want to use it.”

“Thanks.”

He smiled and closed the door. 

The shower was one of those self-contained units that recycled and purified the water it used, so not much of it got lost. A necessity in places like this. I undressed and washed myself and then the suit, grimacing when the water washed away dark from both. The suit would probably dry before I left if I hung it outdoors. 

I unbraided my hair. It came down to the middle of my back, the longest it’d ever been. I forgot about it most of the time since I wore it up, but that day I went out of the shower with it wet over my shoulder, towel around my waist out of modesty, dripping suit over my arm.

“Can I hang this somewhere?” I said. When he looked at me, his eyes were a little wider then they’d been and when he spoke, he sounded flustered.

“Balcony. You can’t really do much but stand, but I dry the laundry there.”

He pinned my suit to a clothes line and hid a yawn behind his hand as he showed me to the kitchen table, the only place to sit besides the bed.

“You were asleep when I got here, weren’t you,” I said. “Sorry. When do you leave next?”

“I just got in this morning.”

“Then go back to bed. I’ll get out of here.”

“Are you tired?” he said. 

I’d been awake for three days by that point. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep. He must have read it on my face because he took my hand and led me to the bed. 

“We can eat later,” he said. He pulled the curtain down and he pulled my hand until I landed on the bed next to him. The towel fell off, but I was so exhausted there wasn’t time to be embarrassed.

“Do you have enough room?” he murmured.

My eyes were already closing. “Uh huh.”

He took up most of the bed, but there was enough space for me along the edge. The sheets didn’t hold much of his scent.

“Should I set an alarm?” he said.

“No. I’m here for a couple days.”

He rolled over, and when he settled, his back pressed against my back. It was comfortable to sleep touching. I used to fall asleep on his shoulder as a kid when they’d let me come over for movies. Except Adam wasn’t here now, just a younger copy of Shiro and I was naked in his bed.

I was also too tired to think about it. He’d loaned a friend his shower and the left side of his mattress. It didn’t have to mean any more than that.

* * *

He’d already gotten up when I opened my eyes. He’d been cooking. The apartment was heavy with some sort of food odor I couldn’t identify, but it didn’t smell too bad. He’d opened the sliding door, keeping the curtain mostly drawn to keep the light out. I pushed up enough to look around and rub my eyes, hoping they’d water, but it was dry on the planet and in the room, and no matter how many times I blinked, they wouldn’t.

“Morning,” he said from the table a couple of feet away. He had a book in his hands, an Earth book. I wondered where he’d gotten it. Probably from Pidge. I didn’t recognize the cover, but then I’ve never been much of a reader. He pointed to a stack of clothing on the edge of his bed. 

“That’ll be a little big on you, but I thought you might want something to put on while your suit dries. Sleep okay?”

I nodded. “Thanks. Am I keeping you from something?”

“It’s my day off.” 

“Sorry. You probably wanted to rest.”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do more than see you.”

I was grateful that I was still lying down and could use the excuse of stretching to hide my face in the pillow, the one he’d brought with him from the rock. I didn’t want him seeing my face after he said that. Lying in his bed naked, listening to his voice, knowing I’d just slept next to him had me hard with no way to relieve it.

I wondered if he usually slept naked, if the shorts had been for my benefit, why I was thinking about this at all. Probably because it had been months since I’d let anybody touch me.

“What do you usually do on your day off?” I said.

“Same things everyone does. Sleep. Catch up on chores.”

“What about friends?”

“Everybody’s friendly here. They’ve all been welcoming, but…” I heard him scratch his head. “I don’t know. I think it’s important that they spend time with each other right now. and I’m so busy, I don’t really think about being alone. It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

I kept my back to him when I got up. I couldn’t find the towel. He’d probably hung it up. The clothing he’d left me consisted of briefs and a shirt that covered my torso. It ended at the top of my thighs. I pulled it on gratefully.

“I need the bathroom,” I said, escaping into it. 

I came with my teeth biting my hand, a forbidden name in my mouth, and while the guilt and dissatisfaction lingered, the problem was taken care of for now. I could meet his eyes when I came back into the room. He’d gotten up from the table and was standing at the kitchenette.

Even though I knew he’d been cooking, now that I was fully awake, I was surprised to see him in a kitchen. Shiro couldn’t cook. He was notoriously bad at it—the only thing he really ever failed at. Shiro couldn’t boil water without the pot boiling over. The man who could command a squadron into battle couldn’t make spaghetti. He had the number to six different takeout places near the Garrison base memorized: pizza, sandwiches, two different noodle shops—we’d always ordered out on evenings they had me over for a movie. He’d never made me breakfast.

“What are you making?” I asked, guilty Ryou was making something for me when he’d already eaten.

“It’s nothing special.” He said that, but from the way he looked up at me and smiled, then returned his eyes to the cutting board, to the knife in his hand, I knew he was proud. “I got tired of rations. They have a few things here I can digest. These are kind of like potatoes. They’re not bad. I’ve been experimenting with ways to cook them. They’d be better with salt, but it’s hard to come by here.”

I wondered if Pidge had taught him how to hold the knife, the best way to slice the vegetable, or if he’d filled hours working out his own method. 

The vegetables, when he served them, didn’t have much flavor. But the texture was good, crispy on the outside, the centers tender. More bitter than a potato and more grainy, but they filled my stomach and he was right. They were better than rations. Rather than coffee or tea, there was a pale yellow beverage steeped from the leaves of a plant that had been saved from Olkarion. It had a bright, strange taste but it shaved off the exhaustion of morning. I drank a second cup when he offered, while he sat across the table from me with his book, occasionally raising his eyes to watch me eat.

“When do you have to go?” he said.

The Coalition had gotten word of growing faction activity on the opposite side of the quadrant. They couldn’t get involved in something like that, so the Blades’ next mission would be to infiltrate one of those organizations before they could cause harm. I was two years shy of thirty and still sneaking onto ships. But I thought it would scare him to know about it, so I didn’t offer any details.

“Probably the day after tomorrow.”

He smiled, like he’d expected me to say I’d be leaving as soon as I’d finished breakfast. 

“It’s too bad you’re not staying another week,” he said. “Pidge is due back out this way with her mother.”

“What’s Colleen coming out for?”

“They’re trying to reconstruct the forest, but the soil composition isn’t the same and the saplings aren’t doing well.”

I put my hands on my stomach and leaned back in the chair. “Can’t they supplement it?”

“Yes, but they don’t want to have to do that indefinitely. Colleen is cultivating a hybrid that can survive the environment. Pidge is optimistic.”

“You two have really hit it off.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “It was strange at first. The last time I saw her, she couldn’t have been thirteen. The Holts invited me to dinner and she talked my ear off.” He winced, like he was in pain, the way he used to sometimes after we went riding and his muscles were acting up. We’d both assumed his body’d had the same genetic modifications that Shiro’s had. But what if…

I gripped his arm. 

“Shiro?” I said without thinking. 

I regretted it as soon as he looked at me, like I’d handed him the universe.

“I’m not sick,” he said gently. “I just promised myself I wouldn’t talk about the past.”

He placed his right hand on top of mine. Warm. Human. Suddenly I was sixteen again, like someone had flipped a reset switch and sent me back. I was sixteen years old and desperately, terribly in love. 

I was twenty-eight and still was.

What would Shiro think if he knew I was sitting in an apartment with his clone— _another_ clone. Sitting at that clone’s table, eating the food he’d made for me. What would he think of us sleeping in the same bed, our hands on the table, the way Ryou talked about the past like it was ours? In a way it was, but I tried to imagine myself in Shiro’s place and got agitated thinking of him being with someone who looked like me, sounded like me, had my memories. My jealousy flared up. I’d be furious. I’d be gutted if he did that.

I withdrew my hand. 

“I need to run out to my ship for something,” I lied and got up before Ryou could say another word. 

The suit was damp at the seams but I put it on anyway, relieved when I was covered from ankle to wrist even in the heat. 

* * *

He hugged me goodbye when I left the next day, promising to write. 

And he did. He continued to send messages—several a day at first, but they soon slowed to match my replies. I didn’t write back more than once a week. Years in space and I still counted time the way I had in childhood. I hadn’t been on a planet with “weeks” since the Earth War. 

I kept my replies professional: where I was, who I’d seen. I didn’t talk about myself unless he’d asked something specific, and even then, I only said as much as I had to.

His were the opposite. Despite not sending them frequently, his letters were fond, growing longer with each one. I could tell he wrote them in pieces throughout the day, whenever he found some time. I pictured him writing me in the downtime between landing and passengers boarding, or when his co-pilot took over and he could catch up on sleep. Sometimes the messages read like a report: flight conditions, the number of people on board. But he’d tell me about things you’d never write in an official document, like what he had for dinner. What he dreamed about. Nightmares. That he hoped I was coming soon.

Mom called them love letters. I told her that was bullshit. Dependency, sure. I was his first friend. If we’re being technical, I was the first human he ever saw. Anything more than that was off limits. 

But I couldn’t ignore him. A lot of the time his messages freaked me out, like when he sent details of a brutal nightmare from his time in captivity. Sometimes he sounded so lost and alone that I’d call him, and the lucky times the signal went through, he’d whisper, “I’m all right, I’m okay” like he was rocking me, like I’d been the one upset. 

Those days, we fell asleep talking. “I feel better hearing your voice,” he’d say. 

And times we were too far apart for calls or the signal was distorted by interference, he’d send a video or a voice recording. He didn’t send stuff like that to anyone else. He told me that once. I don’t think he really talked with anyone else, not about the things that upset him. And I selfishly clung to the knowledge that I was special to him, that he treated me differently than other people. I told myself that friendship with him was enough, that I was the only person I was hurting.

* * *

Shiro was the last of us to arrive at the next reunion. I didn’t go out to greet his ship like I had at the last one. I was in the room I took every year sitting next to a large circular window, composing a message to Ryou letting him know I’d arrived safely. He’d asked me to call him later, once dinner was over. Asked for a photograph of the team. They’d never been his, but he liked the stories I told him about our time with Voltron.

These gatherings had initially been a memorial, before the lions had returned and brought Allura with them. I’ll never forget the look on Lance’s face, how the spots on his cheeks had gone supernova and he’d cried so hard Pidge had to give him a sedative. It had been a couple years since then and they still orbited each other like newlyweds, him and Allura. They had the room next to mine and the walls there weren’t exactly soundproof. 

I sent the message promising Ryou I’d call. Then Hunk knocked on the door and stuck his head in my room. “Shiro’s here,” he said.

“I know. Thanks. I was just finishing up.”

“Keeping busy?”

“Yup.” I got up and stepped into the hallway with him. We started toward the courtyard. “How come you and Shiro weren’t on the same ship? Weren’t you coming from Earth?”

“I’ve been doing some traveling, researching new ingredients.”

“You should try these tubers they’ve got on the Okari colony. Ryou could write a cookbook about them.”

“Oh?” Hunk said. “How’s he liking it there?”

“He settled into the job quickly.”

“He’s flying, right? For the Coalition?”

“He’ll work out of that colony for a while and transfer when they need him somewhere else.”

Hunk nodded. “And he’s… adjusting?”

“He’s taking things pretty well.”

“Still, that’s gotta be so weird,” Hunk said. “Being told you’re not who you think you are. It’s not like you can just give up your identity. He’s like a software fork.”

“I guess.”

We reached the door to the courtyard. I went through first. Allura and Lance were waiting outside with Pidge. I’d said hello to all of them earlier. Shiro had come in a small transport, not the _Atlas_ , and this year he hadn’t travelled alone. 

Lance shot me a worried look that I waved off.

“Uhh...is this going to be a problem?” Hunk whispered. 

“Why would it be a problem?” I said.

“Yeah, why would it be a problem? It’s not like he dumped you and married a guy we barely know. Totally cool.”

“We weren’t together.”

“A technicality. I swear I didn’t know he was bringing him here.”

“It’s fine,” I said and I proved it by walking up and shaking both of their hands. I didn’t _hate_ him. I was grateful to him if he made Shiro happy, but I was bitter that he’d come along. Nobody else had brought a plus one.

Shiro’s beard had grown in more but it was still patchy. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything. He laughed and scratched his chin. “You hate it,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Curtis thinks I look distinguished.”

Curtis thought white tuxes were a good idea. “He’s the only one you’ve gotta impress.” 

We’d gotten separated from the rest of the group. They were probably leaving us alone to catch up for a few minutes, walking with Curtis to the patio where dinner had been laid out. 

“You look good, Keith,” Shiro said and I didn’t say anything, only bristled at his words. I didn’t want to hear that kind of stuff from him anymore. He cleared his throat. “So how’s your work?”

“Good. Yours?”

“A little boring. I miss space.”

I didn’t bring up the offer I’d once made him, the two of us exploring it together.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said. “I’d go crazy staying in one place.”

“How’s Ryou doing?”

I cast him a sideways glance. “I figured the two of you kept in touch.”

Shiro shook his head. “I get the sense he doesn’t really like talking to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember the way you used to talk to your flight instructors?” There was laughter in his voice. “It’s kind of like that. He’s not impolite, but there’s something in his tone. I just wish I knew what I’d said so I could apologize.”

I thought of what Hunk had said. I thought about Ryou’s nightmares, about the way he’d light up whenever I accidentally called him by Shiro’s name. 

“I don’t think it’s you,” I said, although that wasn’t true. Shiro was the problem. But I couldn’t tell him that. “Nothing you _did_. He’s just...trying to find his place.”

“I’m glad you’re there for him,” Shiro said sincerely. 

I gave him a smile. But it was hard to maintain it as we sat down to dinner, when he lifted a glass with his left hand and I caught the glint of a ring I didn’t give him.


	4. four

I spent my twenty-ninth birthday getting frostbite on a moon while unloading crates of optical fibers. Ryou’s message came through two days later: a photo of a bottle—probably some kind of alcohol—and the words “Happy birthday. Rain check on the celebration?” 

I hadn’t been back there. Acxa had agreed to swap with me for the next two scheduled drops on the Olkari colony, but there was no getting out of the third, fifteen Earth months after Ryou had settled there. He met me at the dock. 

I didn’t fight the arms he put around me. I let him hold me and closed my eyes.

“It’s so good to see you,” he said.

He took my bag without asking and carried it over his shoulder, using his other hand to point out recent changes to the colony as we covered the short distance from my ship to his apartment.

“After dinner, I’ll take you on a walk. I really think you’re going to be impressed with what they’ve been able to do since the last time you were here.”

His apartment was spotless. Laundry waved from a line on the patio. The bottle waited on the counter beside a large frying pan and two glasses. On the bed, the sheets were pulled tight. He set my bag down next to the bed and faced me.

“I don’t know how hungry you are,” he said. “Do you want to relax first?”

“You don’t have to go to any trouble for me.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this. Oh!” He moved into the kitchen area and picked up the bottle. “This is a gift from Acxa.”

“You met her?”

“I helped with unloading when she came in with the last shipment. She said you like this stuff.”

The stuff was Galra brandy strong enough to knock me on my ass after two shots. Acxa could down it like juice. “Uh…we should probably drink that with food,” I said. “It’s pretty rough.”

He smiled. “Anyway, make yourself at home. I was about to jump in the shower when you called. I’ll just be a minute.”

“Take your time.”

I used it to familiarize myself with his surroundings. He’d accumulated more things since the last time I was here. There was a stack of books next to his bed seven titles high and beside them a small square frame that cycled through various images, pictures he’d taken on his travels. But after the first ten images was one of my face he must’ve taken last time, and another was a candid of me from the reunion. He’d probably gotten it from Pidge.

Rubbing the surprise from my face, I pulled off my boots and changed into the clothes I’d brought with me—a pair of shorts Lance had shoved on me and a gray Garrison t-shirt. I rarely wore Earth-style clothes anymore. Galra stuff was more comfortable, despite how it looked. I kicked my bag underneath his bed once I was finished changing and sat down to wait.

He came out of the bathroom dressed in dark pants and a sleeveless white shirt.

“Much better,” he said. “By the way, I picked up an extra towel for you. It’s in the bathroom if you need it.”

My face grew hot. “Thanks.”

“So I don’t know if what I’m planning is going to work, but I have been trying to recreate pizza. There’s nothing here like tomatoes—they wont grow—but I think I’ve got a crust down and it’s not terrible.”

“I trust you.”

He dipped his head and smiled. 

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“Nope. You just relax.”

While he worked, I thumbed through the books on his nightstand. I hadn’t read any of them, but I recognized a couple titles from high school.

“I didn’t know you were into reading,” I said.

“I never really had the time to do much of it. but I’ve always wanted to read those. They’re pretty interesting. I have more downtime than I used to.”

“I’m surprised you’ve physical copies.”

“Pidge found them. I have digital ones too but…it’s different, holding something in your hands.”

There was something suggestive in his voice. I flushed and put the book down. 

“Should I open that bottle now?” I said.

“Sure. Food’s about ready.”

We ate at the table with the window open. It was hot, but a breeze rolled in and cooled the sweat on my skin. I’d need another shower before we went to bed unless we’d be sleeping with the window open. He hadn’t offered for me to stay and I hadn’t asked. There was an unspoken assumption that I’d be staying at his place while I was there. It was more comfortable than being on my ship, but I took another look at the fresh sheets, the tidiness of the place, the bottle of brandy. The way he’d styled his hair like he was trying to impress someone. I was the only one there.

He poured two glasses of brandy and held one up. “Happy birthday,” he said. The stuff was so strong it brought tears to my eyes. I wiped them and he poured us both another.

The “pizza” didn’t taste much like pizza, but it wasn’t bad after a drink. The liquor went right to my head. I held onto his arm as we stumbled through the city afterwards and he showed me places where he’d worked, introduced me to the residents he knew. He called me “my friend Keith” and I said hello or waved when other people did. 

It was beautiful there at night, dark like the desert on Earth. Since we were far from it, none of Earth’s constellations were overhead. Leaning into his side, I looked up at unfamiliar shapes. Tried to connect them. There was something long and straight like a sword, and near it something boxy, next to another larger boxy thing and I immediately thought of Red, the way she’d looked with a sword in her mouth. We hadn’t spent that many years together, really just that first one, but watching her fly away the last time—I hadn’t expected to get so emotional about it.

I said that to him, then. I told him I was sad the lions were gone and he put an arm around my back.

“But isn’t it good they’re gone?” he said. “Doesn’t that mean they’re not needed anymore?”

“Yeah, you’re right. But don’t you miss it?”

“I’m sure I would,” he said, and then I remembered and I groaned.

“Fuck. Sorry. I forgot.”

“I _wish_ I remembered that,” he said. “I’d love to talk with you about it. But I’ll have to settle for your stories. Hey, watch your footing. Do you want me to carry you?”

I’d be embarrassed as hell if I remembered everything in the morning. Dammit, Acxa.

“I’m good,” I said, and I unhooked the arm I had through his and slung it behind his neck. “How come you’re not drunk?”

“Guess I have a high tolerance.”

I could see the outline of my ship in the distance against the night sky. We were back near the docks, near his apartment. In a couple of minutes we’d be inside again. The alcohol hadn’t worn off at all. We’d be inside, in his bed, and there was a good chance I’d do something I would regret in the morning. I should’ve gone to my ship. I should’ve made some excuse about forgetting something and said I wanted to sleep in my own bed, but he might’ve stayed with me, and the bed in the ship was even smaller.

Best to go with him. Shiro was a boy scout—Ryou was too. Even if I did do something stupid, he’d never let it go too far.

Back at the apartment, I watched him change from the kitchen, the alluring flex of his back muscles. He was a little leaner than Shiro used to be, not as bulky in his arms. His muscles came from hard labor, not hours in a gym training for deep space travel. I put on the shirt he gave me and got into bed. The room was spinning. It felt like the floor was coming up and over my head, tilting me backwards. I was laughing when I closed my eyes.

“You really are a lightweight,” he said. The bed dipped when he got into it and he crawled over me, putting himself between me and the window. After a couple seconds he settled, pulling the sheet to our waists. The window was open, letting in a breeze, the trilling of insects I had no reference for.

“Thank you,” he said and I was confused because I didn’t remember doing anything, but I was too tired and too comfortable to think. 

“No problem,” I said and he laughed softly.

“Goodnight, Keith.”

* * *

I was standing in a desert where I’ve stood before. It’d been a month since I’d dreamed about that place. There was no one else there, no chairs, no officiant. No one wearing white. I’ve loved the desert my whole life, but that place— _that_ place I could do without. 

I’d expected them the hold the service inside, but Curtis had wanted something outdoors, so they’d planned a fall wedding so they could wear suits. I felt like I’d been slapped when I found out where they were having it. The desert had always been our thing—not like I had exclusive rights to it or anything. At least they didn’t do something like ride off into the sunset on hover bikes. Instead, they’d had a reception under a white tent and Shiro’s new husband had smashed a big, deserving piece of cake in his face. That was about the only time I’d laughed. I’d faked it through my speech. Those years of diplomacy had drilled the ability into me. I’d forced a smile until I walked out from under that tent, and that’s when I lost it. Lance and Hunk had gotten me good and drunk, and got me back to my room. I couldn’t look at a desert for a long time after that.

I wasn’t so angry about it now. It was just rock, some reddish sand. The tent wasn’t there. There was no music, no laughter, no cake. But there was his voice. 

I listened for it over the moaning wind. He was calling for help. I looked around but there was no one. I turned in a circle, training my eyes on the ground in case he’d fallen. He grunted like he was in pain and when he cried out, I shouted his name.

I must have said it out loud and startled myself awake. It was still dark, the room hot. I wasn’t drunk anymore. Beside me, Ryou thrashed his legs and made aborted movements like he was trying to turn over but couldn’t. He was moaning in his sleep, breathing hard, begging “no, no” and gasping like someone had punched him. 

I shook him awake. It took a few seconds, but he sniffed and opened his eyes, staring at me like he didn’t know who I was. He took a breath, then another.

“Keith?”

“Hey. You were having a nightmare.”

He rubbed his face with both hands. “Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I don’t know.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shrugged. He _did_ want to talk; I could tell from the way he moved his tongue over his lips. 

“What did you dream about?” I said.

“Losing my arm.”

Those words went through me like ice. I gripped his shoulder a little tighter. The next words he said were in a whisper.

“I used to think it was just a recurring nightmare. You know the kind that feels so real you wake up and you think it’s really happened?”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve had those.”

“I used to dream about it back where you found me. I dreamed about all kinds of things. I wrote them off as side effects of long-term hibernation because whenever I woke up from that nightmare, I’d look at my hands and they were human.” He swallowed. “But when I talked with him, when I talked with Shiro, I saw he’s missing the arm I dream about.”

“How did it happen?” I said. I’d never asked Shiro. It had never seemed like the right time. 

“Arena fight.” He rubbed his eyes. I was quiet; I’d always assumed it had been surgical. “This massive thing came running at me. It had these huge claws; they were the size of my thigh. I remember the pain. I remember the blood.” He held out his right arm and turned his palm face up, letting it fall into his lap. “When I was seven, I fell off of a horse and gashed the side of my leg open on a rock. The cut was so deep they gave me twelve stitches. The scar’s not there anymore. Neither are the ones I got fighting—there were so many. But I convinced myself the pod must have healed them the way I thought it’d healed my muscles.”

“You had no way of knowing,” I said. 

“All the signs were there. There were files about me on those computers if I’d turned them back on. I just didn’t want to know. And then you found me and I thought, maybe I’ve been wrong all this time! Maybe I _am_ who I think and it was just a healing pod. But I knew as soon as I saw your face. There was no way you were eighteen. And the way you looked at me, like you were going to be sick…”

I had never seen Shiro cry, not like Ryou was crying now. His tears reflected the red glow from his alarm. He was fighting his composure—I could tell by the tension in his jaw, the way he kept biting down to keep his chin from quivering. I moved on instinct. I hugged him the way I would have hugged Shiro, and he buried his face against my neck. 

“Who am I?” he said. 

I didn’t know how to answer. He kept talking. 

“I remember the first time I met you. You were sitting by a window in the classroom. You were the only one who wouldn’t look up when I was talking. That’s why you drew my attention. I was really surprised you did so well on the simulation, but when your teacher started talking about you, I understood why you’d acted the way you had. That’s why I wanted to go easy on you. I remember talking to you in the parking lot outside the detention center, asking you to meet me. I remember the desert, going riding together. You coming over for pizza. Saying goodbye the morning of the launch. I remember all of it, only none of it’s mine. My first real memory of you is in that cave.”

I tried to think of what Shiro would’ve said to me if our places had been reversed. “Nobody’s saying those memories aren’t yours.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. You have no idea what this is like. Everything that was mine is his: my rank, my apartment, my car, my clothes, my bank account. My family. My best friend won’t look me in the eye. I can’t even use my name. He’s taken everything from me. Why is he living my life? Just because he’s the one who woke up first? I have as much of a right to those things as he does.”

I ran a hand over his hair. He squeezed me tightly and let go, getting out of bed and crossing the room. He turned his back to me. I curled my fingers into my palm.

“I know it hurts you when I talk about him,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You can talk about whatever you want. I can handle it.”

“You were in love with him.”

There was no point lying. “Yes.”

“What happened?” he said. “Did he not…”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “Our work was more important. We couldn’t let personal things get in the way.”

“Does he know?” he asked.

“Yeah, he knows.”

“Does he know how miserable you are?”

My face went hot. “I like being on my own. Turns out he’s the one who doesn’t.”

“He must feel like a hypocrite after what we said to Adam.”

“We were all pretty surprised when we found out he was getting married. The others didn’t even know he was dating.” 

Shiro had told me the morning after their first date. “I’m seeing someone,” he’d said and the shock of it, those words, had caused every cell in my body to seize up. I’d known real fear in that moment, the fear of losing him. 

Ryou shook his head. “I can’t believe he would marry someone other than you.”

“I can get Pidge to send you the wedding pictures if you want. I didn’t keep any. Just do me a favor and look at ‘em after I leave.”

He stared down at me with something like pity. “Keith, do you have any idea how much you mean to me? What you’ve done for me…”

“Please stop.”

“Can’t you look at me as my own person?”

He knelt down beside the bed, his knuckles brushing my jaw. His hand was trembling. The way he was looking at me, I understood what he wanted. This was one of those moments that was going to define my life. I knew what I _should_ do. I should walk out that door. A year, two years later when I could think straight, when I could parse the differences between them, maybe then I could consider approaching this. But right then, everything, all of my feelings were jumbled. 

When I looked at him and my heart sped up, was it because I was looking at him or was it residual feelings for Shiro? Both? The fact that I couldn’t answer was reason enough for me to leave, but I didn’t. I wiped my eyes and I let him touch me. It’d been years since that time, the only time Shiro had ever touched me like that. But unlike that time, Ryou didn’t stop. He put his mouth to mine.

I was shaking. Every part of me shook even though I wasn’t cold. He wrapped his arms around my back, lifting me off the bed, and I felt like my body was breaking up. My mind was fighting me, telling me this was wrong, this was _wrong_. But it had been so long since I’d had this, I’d forgotten the feeling of being in somebody’s arms. 

He was making soothing noises in my ear, saying “shh, it’s all right,” and I was nodding, wanting to believe it. His hands moved over my body and he kissed me again. This time I kissed back. 

I knew his mouth. I knew those lips, the heat of his tongue. They were the same. But the mouth against mine wasn’t hesitant. There was no regret in it and my heart was surprisingly calm. I stopped shaking. I lay still while he took off my clothes. 

“Keith,” he whispered. “How many fights have you…” 

“A couple.”

He kissed every scar. He lifted my legs and examined the backs, kissed the scars he found there too. The insides of my thighs. My stomach. My chest and shoulders. Down each arm and every finger on both hands, his mouth touched almost every part of me. He rolled me onto my stomach to examine my back and I shivered as he drew his hands down my ribs. 

There was the sound of fastenings on clothing, of fabric pooling on the floor, and he put his weight on me. He was naked. His skin was hot everywhere it touched mine, tongue wet on the back of my neck. When his cock twitched against my ass, I clawed my fingers in the sheets.

“Has he ever kissed you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He rolled me over and took my mouth again, hard, like he was trying to erase himself. 

“How many times?” he whispered. “How many times has he kissed you?”

Did he mean the first one to my cheek when we’d hugged goodbye before a mission, or that slow almost-brush that was all breath when Shiro was recovering in my bed? The one I’d planted on him after Allura restored his spirit because I’d been so desperate to have him back, I couldn’t stand it—did that one count? What about the last one, the one to my forehead, my face in his hands as he’d whispered apologies?

“I don’t know,” I said and he ground his hips against mine. 

“Did he ever do this?”

“No.”

He kissed me again. “Has he been inside you?”

“No.”

“Would you let me?”

I’d obsessed about that over the years, ever since the first time I found out how two guys could have sex with each other—after the time I’d walked in and found him and Adam on the couch. I could never get that image out of my head, no matter how many times I’d tried to overwrite it. I never thought the topic would come up so suddenly or at all. I’d messed around plenty over the years, but _that_ …

I shivered. “I’ve never done that before.” 

He put his lips to the scar on my face. 

“It doesn’t have to be today.” 

He was hard against my stomach. I put a hand between us and gripped us both together. He groaned and slowly thrust his hips, sliding his cock against mine. 

“Look at me,” he said. His pupils were huge and dark. I moved my hand and we both gasped.

“Say my name,” he said and I whispered it, the name he’d chosen for himself. But he shook his head. He bit my lips and I knew what name he wanted to hear. 

It came out in a breath, softly. As easy as exhaling. After that, I couldn’t stop saying it. Like floodgates had opened, it came out like water.

“Shiro. _Shiro_.”

“Yeah, baby. I’m right here.”

He might have been crying or I might have been crying. My face was wet. I didn’t know who the tears belonged to. I kissed him and kissed him, squeezed him as hard as I could, like I could force myself under his skin if I squeezed hard enough. 


	5. five

In the morning when I opened my eyes, the hair on the pillow next to mine was the wrong color.

I left while he was sleeping.

I dressed in the dark, not bothering with a shower—I’d take one on the ship—and slipped out of the door before the sun came up. I was furious with myself. I blamed what had happened on his tears. If he hadn’t started crying, I never would’ve tried to comfort him, and if I’d brushed off his hand, he wouldn’t have kissed me.

Ten years of self-control eroded in an instant. I’d even said his name. I’d said it so many times I’d lost count and I’d let myself imagine, I’d _willingly_ pretended that they’d been Shiro’s hands on me, Shiro’s mouth, that it had been Shiro I’d fallen asleep next to. I hadn’t behaved this badly at the wedding.

I was already halfway to my ship when he came after me in whisper-thin pants and no shirt. His feet were bare. He was out of breath from running, the look in his eyes disappointed. He’d known I wasn’t gonna to say goodbye but didn’t ask for a reason.

He only said, “When will you be back?”

No pressure, no guilt. A totally neutral tone of voice. I wasn’t sure if I appreciated or resented it. I shrugged, turning my head toward the failing forest. He stepped closer to me. I could smell him, smell myself on him. When I did nothing, he bent his head.

The kiss was liquid soft and drained my energy. I felt like an idiot for leaving the way I had.

“I’ll keep you up to date on my location,” he said in a voice that was quiet and desperate. “If I’m close by…”

I knew what he was offering. “Sure. Take care,“ I said. If I kissed him with my eyes closed, it didn’t matter what color his hair was.

* * *

His messages continued, sometimes three or four in the course of a day. Where he was, people he met. What he was wearing. That he missed me. How he’d touch me if he could.

He signed his messages now. The first time he did it, the sight of that name caught me off guard. I thought I’d opened the wrong message by mistake, so I double checked it. No, it was from Ryou. Ryou, who was determined to reclaim his old name.

I didn’t tell him to stop. If I had, I might have been able to write that night off as a mistake. Blamed it on alcohol, lack of sleep, the confusion that comes with deep space travel. Changes in radiation and gravity take a toll on your body after a while.

If I’d told him to stop writing me the first time he sent a shirtless picture of himself, I might have had ground to stand on, but I saved the picture. I sent ones when he asked through an encrypted channel so no one could intercept them.

I got off to the ones he sent and I didn’t tell him to stop writing.

* * *

Thirteen weeks after that first encounter, I was making a delivery when he messaged to say he was in the same system. He asked for my location, ordered me to stay where I was. I told him I didn’t have much time, not more than two hours on surface before I was scheduled to leave if I was going to make a rendezvous with another ship, but he repeated for me to stay put.

“Please, Keith,” he said. Like I could have refused him.

He’d cut his hair. It was short on the sides, undercut, the top longer. So similar to the way he used to wear it that my heart stopped and then beat so fast I worried that the people around me could hear it, that _he_ could hear it, but it didn’t matter. He could see in the way I couldn’t control my face how glad I was to see him. He’d bought new clothes too, similar in style to the clothes he’d worn on Earth, fitted so they showed off his chest and arms. He had on something like sunglasses—the effect was the same; he knew how he looked, and he knew I liked the way he looked. His mouth widened into a smile when he saw me.

“I need a shower,” I said when he put his hands on me, and he shook his head.

“I want you like this.”

We went inside my ship. He kissed the back of my neck while he undid the fastenings on my uniform, lips chasing his hand down my spine. ”Do you have any idea how hot you look in this?” he said. I shivered and he put his hands inside the uniform, sliding them around to my stomach.

“I want to fuck you,” he said.

Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against his shoulder, afraid of how much it’d hurt with someone his size, but I was hard and he looked so goddamn much like Shiro.

“Okay.” I braced myself against the wall. “Whatever you want. Do it.”

He laughed, low and delighted, in my ear.

“There’s no time today. I don’t want to rush that. I want to be inside of you for hours.” He removed the uniform from my arms and stripped me to my ankles. “Put your legs together. Tighter.”

He slipped his cock between my thighs and started to thrust, reaching around to stroke me. It would’ve been better with lube, but I didn’t have anything within reach and my cock was leaking so much his hand was soon slick anyway. I fucked his fist, cheek plastered to the cold metal wall.

His chest covered my back. He hadn’t undressed. I imagined the Garrison uniforms we used to wear, the glow from his shoulder, how white his hair would look pressed against mine. With his right arm, he held me where he needed me. I said his name and he sunk his teeth into the base of my neck. The pain made my cock throb. I squeezed my legs together tighter.

“Fuck, _Keith_.”

The way he said it came out like moaning. My hand slipped and I watched the ghostly impression of my palm on the wall evaporate.

“Thought about this for months,” he whispered. “You feel so...”

“Shiro, I’m gonna...”

“Come for me.” He thrust harder. “I wanna hear you.”

He did something with his wrist and everything got tight. Behind my eyelids, I saw yellow light. The next thing I knew, he had both arms around me and was thrusting shallowly, exhaling against my shoulder. The insides of my thighs felt raw. We’d made a mess of the wall and my uniform on the floor.

“Are you all right?” he said.

I was still trying to catch my breath and nodded a few times. He kissed where my shoulder and neck joined, then stood up straighter. My neck throbbed where he’d bitten it. I felt a draft at my back, fluid cooling on my thighs and ass. I stayed shivering against the wall, thinking he might leave or grab a shower. I tried to remember if I had a spare suit on board or would have to scrub this one before I could show myself in front of anyone. As I was bending to pull the suit up, his hands came back and wiped me down with something soft.

“We have a little while,” he said. I figured he wanted a second round and returned my hands to the wall, but he turned me around and picked me up by the waist.

“Put me down,” I said.

I must’ve been heavier than he thought. He grunted but carried me to the bunk that took up most of the living space. He stripped off his clothes and got in first, beckoning me in.

We lay together for the little time we had before I was scheduled to depart. He kissed my temple. I ran my fingers through his dark hair.

“You cut it,” I said.

“It’s easier to take care of when it’s shorter. It was always getting tangled. And it makes me feel more like myself.”

I wondered if that was the reason for the clothing too. When I’d left Earth, I’d let my hair grow and shed my old jacket.

“Ryou…”

He captured the hand in his hair and held it against his cheek. “Why won’t you call me by my real name?”

I averted my eyes. “You know why.”

“You said it a few minutes ago.”

Shame burned my face but I didn't cover it. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Because it makes you think of him?” His voice had a hard edge to it. I thought he might get up, leave me, but he didn’t. I was a challenge and he’d always been stubborn.

“Do you really need to hear me say it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I was thinking about him while I was having sex with you just now.” I wanted to die as the words came out. “Satisfied?”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said.

His lack of self-worth made me angry.

“Listen to yourself,” I said. “You’re happy to settle for his leftovers?”

His eyes flashed. “Don’t you ever talk about yourself like that.”

He sounded furious. He did get up then, standing naked in my tiny quarters, and put his face into his hands. I sat up, swinging my feet to the floor and leaned over my lap. The ship had grown warm with the life-support system offline while we were docked. It was unusually quiet without the engine. Sweat beaded along my forehead and my upper lip. I could taste salt when I licked it.

“You can do anything you want with your life,” I said quietly. “You have a chance to start over. Why would you waste it chasing after me?”

“Being with you is not a waste.” He took a breath. I couldn’t breathe at all. “Keith, I know you still have feelings for him. I’m not asking you to forget them. You shouldn’t forget them. I only hope that one day, you can have those sorts of feelings for me.”

I stared at the dirty floor. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at you and not think of him. It’d be different if you really were his brother, but you’re not. The things you say to me, what you remember about us, those were things Shiro and I had. I can’t just strip them from him and reassign them to you.”

Ryou’s posture was rigid.

“So what’s the alternative?” he said. “We decide it’s better for everyone involved if we go our separate ways? I marry some guy in communications and you keep pretending you’d rather be alone?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

He turned around. His expression was determined. “I’m in love with you,” he said. “As confusing as that might be to hear, I’m in love with you.”

There’d been a time when hearing those words was the only thing I wanted, but to hear them now only made me feel sick. He knelt beside the bed and took my hands.

“Keith.” He kissed my fingers. “I am not _him_. We might have the same DNA, the same memories, but he and I are not the same person. Because he could walk away from you and I could never do that. I’m not going to hurt you the way he did. I will wait, as long as you need. I’m not going to find somebody else.”

“This isn’t fair to you.”

He smiled a little then, which was strange since we were fighting.

“What?” I said. “What’s with that face?”

“You care about me,” he said, a smile hovering at his lips. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be worried about me getting hurt. You’d just use me.”

His certainty caught me off guard.

“You don’t think this is fucked up?” I said. “Being together like this?”

He shrugged. “I’m happiest when I’m with you. If I could, I'd be with you every day.”

“You know what I mean.”

He took one of my hands and placed it over his heart. “We are both grown men capable of making our own decisions. Mine’s that I want to be with you. If you’re not opposed to that, we’ll keep spending as much time together as we can until you feel the same way. Or until the day you break this off. Okay?”

After a pause, I nodded. He laid his head on my lap and I wound my hands back into his hair. I stroked it until my alarm went off, until I had to leave.

* * *

Our conversations were softer in the weeks that followed. If we were close enough, we spoke in real time, distance garbling his words. The pictures he sent changed. Instead of images of him naked, he sent headshots, pictures he’d taken on worlds he visited—like the things he’d sent when he first started to work for the Coalition. He continued to say he missed me, and he signed the messages with _love_. I acknowledged them as they came in—every few days at first, and then with fewer and fewer nights in between, until it was strange to wake up and not have one waiting from him.

* * *

When I visited her, mom said it looked like there was something different about me.

“Are you getting more sleep? Your coloring is better.”

We were in her office going over the inventory of ships, what needed repairs, what the Blades could afford. I got a message from him while I was sitting there and my mouth gave me up—the way it jumped at the corners, went sliding outward into a smile.

She raised one eyebrow.

“Someone I know?”

I didn’t have to tell her. She’d figured it out from my face, how I glanced away. She sighed quietly and pushed the stack of tablets aside. We were both quiet for a minute. I figured she was trying to think of the kindest way to tell me to end things.

She turned her face toward the window.

“Do you remember, when we were in the Quantum Abyss, what you saw of your father and I?”

I’d seen more of my parents than any kid is comfortable seeing, but that hadn’t been her fault. That close to a black hole, time collapses.

“I remember.”

She got a fond look on her face.

“Your father is the only person I’ve ever been in love with. I’ve never had any interest in relationships. From as far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be part of the action. But the time I spent with him on Earth was the happiest of my life. I would’ve stayed there with him indefinitely if they hadn’t found the Blue Lion. I wish we could have raised you together.”

She turned back to me.

“My greatest concern when I left, beyond your safety, was that he would find someone else. That I would lose him. But the mission was more important. I know you understand that sacrifice, though I was sorry to see you have to make it. I’ve always hoped you would have the happiness I couldn’t.”

There’d been no hiding in the abyss. Every humiliating memory, every fantasy, the future I didn’t want—she’d seen them. She’d seen us grow closer and fall apart. We’d both seen that place in the desert. Of course, back then, I didn’t want to believe the future wasn’t mine to control. I’d accepted what we saw as what _could_ happen if things stayed on the same course. There was no changing the past, but the future, that was ours.

I leaned over the desk.

“Mom, if you had a chance to be with dad again, would you take it?”

She was usually an expert in concealing her reactions, a skill honed by years of being a spy. One flinch and she could have blown her cover, gotten herself killed. It wasn’t often I was able to put a new expression on her face. Her eyes widened slightly, and as they glossed over she lowered her head. I hated the fire that had taken him from her, from both of us.

“What your father and I had ended a long time ago.”

She caught my eye. I caught her meaning.

“As your mother, the only thing I care about is your happiness. If he makes you happy, then I support you both. But don’t be surprised if there are people who cannot accept it. Shiro’s husband, for one thing.”

I remembered that curdling feeling in my gut the first time I’d imagined him and Shiro together. Would he feel like that if he found out about me and Ryou? He might ask Shiro to put a stop to it, but they didn’t have that right. Ryou was his own person. We’d stay away from Earth if that’s what we had to do, if it upset them. But Ryou’s decisions couldn’t mean less than theirs.

Neither one of them was really Shiro, but together they made up what was left of him.

Did Curtis know what his husband actually was? Probably. I bet he knew all of the back alleys in Shiro’s brain, the sorts of things Ryou and I messaged about now. Desires. Fears. Somehow, the anger I used to feel when I thought about them was missing. I was glad knowing Shiro was sharing his life with someone, even if that someone wasn’t me.

Mom would’ve felt the same way if my dad had found someone. She was turned away from me again, looking out the window. The sunset was the color of fire.

“Bring him with you next time,” she said.


	6. six

A job took me into another quadrant nowhere near where he was working. The signal there was shit. Sometimes it took half a day before a message from that morning went through. I got into the habit of writing him at night, hoping whatever I’d said would reach him by the time I woke up, and usually by the following evening I’d have a reply.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d called Earth. The last conversation with Shiro had been at the reunion. I used to call him anytime I was bored or pissed off, even after they were together. I’d told myself it was fine for friends to call each other. But I’d known I wasn’t calling as a friend. And Shiro…I think he’d known that too. That’s why he’d always kept his voice down, why he’d ask if I was okay and get off the line as quickly as he could.

My life would have been a lot easier if I could have seen him as an older brother. A mentor. If I could have been the one to plan the bachelor party and send him off smiling. But I look back on that kid I used to be, shoplifting and stealing cars at fourteen, and it’s no wonder I fell for the guy who saw something worthwhile in a scrawny little punk from the Arizona desert.

And I guess, for a while, he was mine. Maybe he would’ve stayed mine if I hadn’t left. Maybe I finally made him understand the way Adam had felt when Shiro left him. Maybe this, how I felt not being able to see Ryou, was the way Shiro had felt on the Kerberos mission.

If I had to do it over, if I had to choose between him and my work, I’d still choose the work. I don’t think I could’ve been happy shacking up with him on Earth. I’d never been good at sitting still. I’ve always had my eyes on the stars, even before I knew I wanted to be among them.

I was unloading a cargo hold stuffed with rations when that realization buckled my knees: I’d do it again. I would give him up again. It shocked me so completely, I almost dropped the crate. Someone walking past saw me struggle and took half the weight, helping me set it down.

I got some water and took a break, sitting with my back against the ship’s hull. For the first time since we’d met in that cave, I was desperate to hear his voice. Not because of who that voice reminded me of, but because it was _his_. I tried getting a hold of him even though I knew the signal wouldn’t go through. The line warbled and crackled before going dead. I reread the last message he’d sent and tapped the device against my lips.

We hadn’t made plans for when we’d see each other next, but I had access to his flight schedule. And one upside to the kind of work I was doing was that help was needed everywhere. The Olkari colony would be reliant on outside sources for years before they’d become self-sustaining, so it wasn’t strange that I told Acxa I was making a route change and headed there directly. It wasn’t strange for me to make a delivery, then knock on his door.

He greeted me with his lips. We didn’t say anything, just went inside. He put his hands on my waist. I put mine on his shoulders and everything around us seemed to fall away.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he said. “I would’ve cleaned up.”

“It was a last-minute change.”

He drew me closer. “Are you hungry?”

I shook my head. “Let me borrow your shower.”

“Of course.” It was morning on the colony. He had faint impressions of pillow folds on his cheek and he smelled like sleep. “I’ll make food in case you want something when you get out.”

I thought he might follow me, but I showered alone and stood outside against the railing while my skin and hair dried. The forest looked more dense, darker and taller since I’d last been here—much taller than it would’ve gotten through natural growth. They must have accelerated it. Construction on the central portion of the city was nearly complete. I hadn’t spent much time on Olkarion, and it’s not like I’d spent that time memorizing what the city looked like, but to my eye it was a good recreation. It gave off the same feeling, a place that was advanced but still organic. I felt humbled looking down on the triumph of a species that had lost so much. Earth had suffered, but at least the planet was still there.

Inside, Ryou was cooking. I heard the hiss and sizzle of something being poured into hot oil.

“There’s tea,” he called.

I came inside and put on the shirt he’d laid out for me. My hair was loose and wet. It made the top of the shirt damp, so I pulled it back. Even with the extra muscle I’d put on moving cargo in twice Earth’s gravity, his clothes were too big. He smiled when he looked at me.

I crowded in beside him at the kitchenette. He’d put on an apron to protect himself from splatter. I touched a healing injury on his left arm.

“What happened?”

“I lost my footing offloading cargo a couple weeks ago.”

“You should use a regenerator. Then you wouldn’t have a scar.”

“Next time I’ll watch my footing.” He kissed my cheek and flipped the thing he was making, which looked like an omelet. After a few more seconds he tipped it out onto a square plate and handed me a pair of utensils like chopsticks.

I wasn’t hungry. I’d eaten on the ship, but I wasn’t going to tell him that now. The omelet had a texture closer to corn than eggs, a mild flavor. I ate the whole thing and pushed the plate aside to look at him.

“Were you sleeping?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

He nodded. “Are you tired?”

I was wide awake. “Beat,” I said and he drew the curtains.

It was warm in his bed, familiar with the scent of his skin. I wasn’t sure how to describe it, what he smelled like. I only knew I liked it and that inhaling it made me excited. He rolled me onto my back.

“I missed you,” he said. He didn’t wait for me to say it in return. He knew I wouldn’t. He lifted the shirt to expose my chest and I lifted my arms so he could pull it off.

I’d never been with anybody like this. Not like _this_ , spending a lazy morning in bed with no place to be. No rush, no expectations. My heart was going crazy but overall I felt calm. I didn’t think I’d mind waking up on this planet with him every morning from now on, and even that thought didn’t scare me.

He kissed slowly but not like someone who was restraining himself. There was no tension behind it. His lips, his hands, they were soft and the way he shifted onto me was gentle, lying between my legs. He took each of my hands in each of his and threaded our fingers together. He shifted and rubbed against me.

We kissed and didn’t say anything. At one point we rolled over, so I was lying on top of him. Our rhythm was instinctual. He’d moved the position of his hands. They were fitting on my hips, guiding but not controlling my motion, and then one of them slipped lower.

I wasn’t afraid of it. I kissed him hard so he would know it was okay. I’d done as much as I could by myself in the shower. He got up for a moment. A drawer opened and closed. I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see anything that would make me stop. And then he was back and his fingers were back, slick, and I knew what was next from a lot of videos about it.

The first intrusion felt strange. Different from when I’d done it to myself. My muscles fought his fingertip, but he put his lips to my ear and whispered.

“Relax.”

I tightened without meaning to. He laughed and whispered again.

“You’re so soft inside.”

His voice turned my stomach to liquid and he slid in further.

I don’t know how long we spent like that. It felt like hours of him whispering to me, telling me it was all right, that we could stop anytime if I was uncomfortable. That he loved me. I didn’t ask how many times he’d done this before. Hundreds, probably, and never. I doubted he’d been with anyone but me, and while there was no real value in a first time, I liked that I had his.

When he finally pushed inside, it felt huge and exhilarating and it burned. He groaned louder than I did.

“Oh my god, you’re tight,” he said. “Are you okay?”

In spite of the prep he’d done, the pain was intense, like I was being split open. “It hurts,” I bit out. “Give me a minute.”

He tenderly kissed the side of my face. His skin was flushed from his cheeks to his stomach, like Shiro’s had been when I’d caught them on the couch. I banished any thoughts of him.

“Just relax,” he whispered. “Relax, Keith. I’ve got you.” He put a hand on my cock and his lips to my ear. “You feel so good. I don’t know if I’m gonna last.”

He moved his hand slowly up and down. Little by little, it started to feel good—the pressure, his size. The burning felt more like arousal now. I felt my muscles relax. I felt myself relax around him.

“You’re getting hard again,” he murmured. “Do you like having me inside of you?”

I managed to put a hand on the back of his neck and guide his mouth to mine. “Go slow.”

He did, so slowly it was almost agonizing. I’d never felt that close to another person as I did then, knees pressed to my chest and his weight on me.

He whispered my name.

I knew what he wanted me to say in return, but I couldn’t make my mouth form the word. That wasn’t who I was with today. Maybe he’d never understand that, maybe he could make the distinction, but I couldn’t. To me, that name would always belong to someone else.

He prompted me again, the soft call of my name. I only realized I’d started crying when his movements stopped and he put a hand to my face.

“Am I hurting you?” he said. He sounded panicked.

I hated the tears rolling down the sides of my face, but I looked him in the eye. “You really want to fuck me while I’m thinking about him?”

He went very still. I kept talking.

“I don’t understand you. Do you want me to go back to being a mess like I was when he got married? You want to take over his life? You know what, you can’t! No, it’s not fair. It sucks, but that’s the way things are.”

He pulled out of me completely, covering me with the sheet and taking me into his arms. He held me against his chest.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He kissed the side of my face. “Keith, I swear I wasn't trying to ... I just wanted to feel like myself because of what we're doing.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want except that. _Please_.” I was crying harder now. “You’ve gotta let me let go of him.”

“I don’t care what you call me as long as I’m the one you’re thinking about.” He drew me closer. “I’ll make you happy. We’ll make new memories, okay? Ones that only belong to us.”

If he’d been a blank slate when I’d met him, if he hadn’t recognized me in that cave, hadn’t remembered the times we’d spent together back on Earth, I never would’ve been there with him like that. And if, somehow, we’d still ended up that way, I wouldn't have struggled. Because he wouldn’t have been Shiro.

I’d never be with the person I loved first, but neither would he. I didn’t know who Shiro’s first love was. It wasn’t the guy he married. That didn’t make it worth less. It wouldn’t make this worth less. I made plenty of mistakes the first time I flew. With some things, you get better the more you do them.

I caught my breath and put my arms back around him. “Keep going.”

He shook his head. “Let me hold you for a while,” he said and rolled me onto my side, curling around me from behind. He wrapped me in his arms and legs, and kissed the back of my neck. “I love you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I’ll say it until you’re tired of hearing it.”

I’d probably die before I reached that point, but I’d never tell him that. Instead I said his name—the one he’d chosen for himself. I repeated it as his arms tightened around me, as his body rejoined mine, as he overwrote the places in me I didn’t think I’d ever give to somebody again.

* * *

We didn’t sleep until dawn. And though the morning was beautiful, he got back into bed after opening the shades and we stayed there until afternoon. I was so sore by midday, he laid me on my back and sat across my legs, using his thighs to move himself up and down while I thrust weakly.

“Do I feel good?” he said, and the only thing I could think was that I wanted to die inside of him. I tried to sit up and he tried to lean over. Our mouths met halfway.

He curled into me afterwards and closed his eyes. I had no idea what time it was, if I’d had any calls. I hadn’t checked my messages since I’d gotten here, only confirmed my arrival so they’d know where I was. Acxa knew better than to contact me. She’d probably say I deserved the time off. I hadn’t really taken any since the war ended. If we’d accumulated vacation time in the Blade, I probably had a couple months backlogged.

“I just got my new assignment,” he said against my neck.

“Where are you headed?”

“They found another planet suitable for terraforming and need someone to transport the equipment. I offered to fly it. Sounds like it’ll take the better part of a year to get it set up.”

“Do you have to move out of this place?”

“I don’t _have_ to.” His breath was warm on my skin. “I like it here. But it’d be better if I give the apartment to another volunteer.”

“Must be nice having a place somewhere.”

“We could get one,” he said. “Maybe on Daibazaal.”

“What would we do with it?”

He laughed. “Live there? I’d like a place to come home to.”

“We’d hardly ever be there at the same time. Not with our schedules.”

“What would you think of working together?”

When I was twenty-five and couldn’t imagine a future without Shiro, I’d asked him the same thing: if he’d fly with me, if he’d come back out to space, if we could spend our lives working side-by-side even if it was only as friends. I knew he’d seen enough of war, of suffering. He’d endured enough for someone who was barely over thirty. The captivity and the torture, losing Adam, the mental strain of leading our team at such a young age—I knew he needed to step away from all that. Regroup. Take time to heal. But I’d thought that, despite all of it, he’d accept my offer. It’d never occurred to me that he’d turn it down.

I’ve always felt the universe had it in for me. First my mom leaving, then my pop losing his life. None of my foster families gave a shit about me, but then Shiro had come along, only to get taken away when he didn’t come back from Kerberos, and again when we truly lost him. I thought my luck had turned around when I got him back, that it was my reward for everything up until then, but he was stolen from me a third time when that one turned out to be a clone. That’d be enough to steal anybody’s hope. You only get so many chances. When Allura restored his spirit and he opened his eyes, looking up at me, I thought it was finally ours. That’s why I kissed him that night even though we’d said we wouldn’t.

Six years later, I watched him promise his future to someone else.

For the first time since that day, I felt a spark in the center of my chest and reached for the hand beneath the covers.

“I wouldn’t mind a co-pilot.”

* * *

About half a year later—closer to two on the colony, not quite two-thirds of one on Daibazaal—I was sitting in Ryou’s apartment when the call came through.

It was the first time we’d been able to see each other in months. He’d flown I don’t know how many routes transporting equipment and was on that planet for another month to get it up and tested. Terraforming is slow business. You have to be careful not to do it too fast and risk the stability of the core. While he’d been there, I was with my mom and Kolivan visiting four planets considering membership. Ryou and I had both put in for a much-needed vacation, and for the next two weeks, it’d just be us.

The next time we departed, it would be together. We’d leave his ship on Daibazaal. Mine had the bigger cabin.

He’d only arrived on the colony that morning. I’d gotten in last night and cleaned up the place, shopped for food, hung out the sheets to air and slept in the bed alone, jumping up when I heard the door latch. He’d caught me in mid-air, dropping his bag and kissing me hello; I kissed him with both arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. We must’ve looked like a couple of kids. He’d spun me around and kicked the door closed. We’d left the bag on the floor and gone straight to bed.

I’d only just gotten up. The call was for him. It was still his apartment, after all. We hadn’t settled on a new one yet. But he was in the shower and I happened to be in the kitchen making a pot of that yellow tea when the screen lit up.

I didn’t flinch when I saw Shiro’s face the way I would have a year ago. His beard was coming in thicker, gray along his chin. He wore a t-shirt in place of a pilot's uniform and sat in a living room in a house I’d never been inside. There was an unlit fireplace behind his shoulder and a big picture window overlooking the desert.

“Keith,” he said, adjusting his glasses. He sounded surprised that I was the one who’d picked up. “It’s good to see you. H—how are you?”

My appearance probably caught him off guard. I was in one of Ryou’s t-shirts with my hair pulled back. I’d obviously just woken up.

“Fine,” I said. “He’s in the shower. Do you want to wait or should I have him call you back?”

“We can catch up for a few minutes.”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to him. So I started with, “How are you?”

He said he was good. They were both good. They’d just come back from the Grand Canyon. That would’ve bothered me to hear once, knowing he’d taken someone else on a trip we’d once kicked around. But today I only smiled.

“How are things going with the Olkari colony?” he asked. “It’s been a while since Pidge called.”

I took a sip of my tea. I'd grown pretty fond of the stuff. “The city’s constructed.”

“And how are you?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said and I meant it.

“How’s your mother?”

“She’s good. Keeping busy.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” He sounded genuinely hopeful.

I’d feared that question from the first morning Ryou and I woke up together, feared having to explain it to him. Sometimes I wished that I could keep Ryou locked up, that he could be a secret only I knew about. But there was no way I was keeping this from Shiro indefinitely. We’d never made it a habit of keeping things from one another—not his illness, not our feelings. The regret on his face at his wedding.

“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”

He smiled in the way you smile when the choice is either to smile or cry. A part of him would probably always love me.

“Does he make you happy?” he said and my throat felt tight.

“You always did.”

A funny look crossed his face as he tried to figure out what I meant. And then the bathroom door opened and Ryou came out with a towel around his hips. His hair had started to grow out again. It was nearly to his shoulders now, the first streaks of gray coming in at his hairline. I wasn’t sure if he realized who I was talking to or not. As he passed behind me, he draped himself over my shoulders and planted a kiss to my cheek, then continued into the kitchen. Judging by the way he looked at me over the rim of his mug, the playfulness in his eyes, he’d done it on purpose.

That wasn’t how I’d hoped to tell Shiro. I’d been meaning to call, only the timing never seemed right and I couldn’t figure out what to say. I had no idea how he might react, if he’d be angry or horrified, or feel violated in some way—tell me I was disrespecting his marriage. I don’t know. I’d run through a dozen scenarios in my head and they’d all ended with me apologizing.

Now I was out of time. There was no way to explain what he’d just seen as anything but what it was, and I couldn’t leave him hanging. Eventually I’d have to look back at the screen.

He wouldn’t hate me. I hadn’t loved him and left him for another version of himself. I’d spent years on my own, miserable over him, and he knew it.

When I looked back, Shiro had done his best to conceal the shock on his face, but I can navigate his expressions as well as anything. He was hurt I hadn’t told him, but he understood why I couldn’t.

“When you come back to Earth,” he said, finally, “the four of us should…”

“Definitely. We’ll have dinner.”

I went outside and left the two of them alone to talk.

Ryou found me afterwards, on the balcony just large enough for the two of us to stand side-by-side and look down over the city, over the fledgling forest on its edge. Colleen’s newest trial of plants was succeeding. The roots could penetrate the alien soil on their own. And while they weren’t the trees I remembered from Olkarion, they were beautiful. They belonged on this world. Maybe one day, the Olkari would look up at those trees and feel the same sort of fondness they had for their home planet before it was destroyed.

Maybe they’d grow to be even more beautiful.

From behind, he wrapped his arms around me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

It was sweet how he worried, but I wasn’t upset. I nodded and put my hands over his.

“I bought stuff to make breakfast,” I said. “Are you hungry yet?”

“In a while.”

He was warm from the shower. His fingertips were rough where he touched me; he had calluses on his palms. They weren’t the smooth hands that had held me in that cave anymore. They weren’t _his_ hands.

These belonged to me. Every bruise, every cut, as long as we were together, I’d be the one who’d see them—evidence of the things that would define his life. Our life.

“I love you,” I said and he smiled against my cheek, against the scar left behind by someone else.

x

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first draft of this across a week in January. It was largely inspired by Florence + the Machine’s cover of _Stand by Me_ , which I listened to 100,000 times*, and long, painful conversations with Synne in which we cried over season 8 and finally decided that a clone was our only chance at happiness. 
> 
> * Google Music says it's only 106 but that seems like a lie.
> 
> Synne proposed Keith saying, “You always did” when Shiro asked if the person he was seeing made him happy. I loved it and wrote that in for her. 
> 
> [Ryou Shirogane](https://voltron.fandom.com/wiki/Ryou_Shirogane) was Shiro’s brother in _GoLion_. Since the name was from VLD-related canon, I thought it was the best choice. It means “clear” and “help,” which I think is perfect.
> 
> I hope you aren’t too upset with Shiro (the one on Earth). I’m really glad for him if he’s happy, and I don’t think he’d ever hurt Keith intentionally—I don’t think he realized just how much Keith loved him until too late. I absolutely believe they’ll regain their friendship. 
> 
> This fic included my headcanon that Keith was a wreck at Shiro’s wedding and that Hunk and Lance took care of him. I wrote that in this fic first, but thinking I’d scrap this, borrowed it [for this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17852474). 
> 
> Endless thanks to Maria (RiatheMai) for beta reading and helping me untangle my words. Your suggestions are on-point and always make me think, "How come I didn't think of that??" Thank you to Synne for encouraging me to write this, and to Tay for calming me down when I melted down over last-minute canon checks. And thanks to my family and co-workers who heard a vague description of this story and said yes, absolutely, date the clone.
> 
> [Inspiration board](https://www.pinterest.com/museaway/vld-sen/) (Pinterest) | [Writing playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60t6LPmpAwPr2Pt0mhpoHA) (Spotify)
> 
> If you're on Twitter, [I hope you will come say hello](https://www.twitter.com/museawayfic)!


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